Attitudes Toward Pornography in a Southern Community

Abstract

ABSTRACT* * * The Supreme Court has determined that obscene speech should not be protected under the First Amendment, but an unambiguous definition of obscenity is required if negative legal sanctions are to be enforced without jeopardizing due process. According to current guidelines, a media presentation of sexually explicit materials must exceed limits of sexual candor to be defined obscene. However, establishing such limits requires articulation of a normative standard for a specified population—a population defined by the court as being a community. The present research is designed to identify such limits of sexual candor within a community in the South. The results demonstrate the existence of ambiguity in the articulation of community standards. First, little consistency is found between personal standards and the perceptions of community standards. This lack of consistency presents a problem for jury deliberation since a single frame of reference is not available to guide jurors in reaching decisions on obscenity. Second, both perceptions of community standards and personal standards are significantly influenced by extracommunity factors of sex, age, race, education, religiosity, and moral rigidity. Existence of such effects raises the additional question of jury bias in the event that there is an overrepresentation of any one segment of the community on a jury.

Who Wants to Censor Pornography and Hate Speech?

“…Gunther (1995), Hense and Wright (1992), and Rojas et al (1996) all found women are more likely to endorse censorship of pornography. And men expressed more favorable views toward sexual candor in mass media presentations than did women (Herrman & Bordner, 1983). Bird (1997), however, found no significant gender differences in willingness to censor hate speech, while D. M. McLeod, Eveland, and Nathanson (1997) detected no differences in endorsement of censorship of violent and misogynic rap lyrics.…”

The roles of value predispositions, communication, and third person perception on public support for censorship of films with homosexual content

“…Religiosity has been found to be positively associated with support for censorship (e.g., Fisher, Cook, & Shirkey, 1994;Herrman & Bordner, 1983;Lambe, 2004;Thompson, Chaffee, & Oshagan, 1990). Previous research has shown a negative association between intrinsic religiosity and tolerance of film portrayals of homosexuals, but demonstrated no significant association between extrinsic religiosity and tolerance of such film portrayals (Detenber, Cenite, Ku, Ong, Tong, & Yeow, 2007).…”

Dimensions of pornography

“…Studies on attitudes toward pornography and attitudes resulting from pornography find that the majority of the general public objects to pornography and believes pornography promotes negative attitudes toward women (Herman and Bordner 1983;Kirkpatrick and Zurcher 1983;Bart et al 1985; War on Pornography 1985; Davis and Smith 1986;Pornography 1986). However, a majority of the general public also opposes censorship of pornographic magazines and X-rated videocassetr.es; and many people believe pornography provides educational information on sex.…”

“…Also, many survey studies found that respondents have both positive and negative attitudes towards pornography (Davis and Smith, 1986;Pornography 1986;War on Pornography 1985;Bart, Freeman, and Kimball, 1985;Herman and Bordner 1983;Kirkpatrick and Zurcher 1983).…”